Brits foaming over relaxed drink laws

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Drinks all round
for English soccer
fans in Lisbon last
year. Soon they
will be able to
drink all day and
all night back
home.Photo: Reuters

The prospect of looming 'Continental' pub opening hours is alarming
sober members of society.

The latest public crisis to hit Britain has nothing to do with
suspicious backpacks, race war or the serial fallibilities of Jude
Law, movie star.

Fears for the Empire now centre on the dawning awareness that in
November it will be possible to buy a beer in a pub at 11.01pm, or
indeed, even 2am. Visiting Australians are regularly caught
off-guard by the quaint English custom of closing pubs at 11pm.

But legislation passed this year means a new dawn for British
drinkers  relaxed licensing arrangements that will permit pub
landlords to open around the clock.

It is hoped that the relaxation would inspire more of a
"Continental" culture of alcohol use.

In yearning for this, British policymakers envisioned long
nights of responsible, mild tippling; of young men in carelessly
knotted cravats knitting their manly brows at midnight: "Another
digestif? Or perhaps just an espresso?" instead of the British
drinking culture, which is all about speed and necessity.

If you're serious about drinking in Britain, you'll never go out
for a few after-work drinks followed by dinner, or even dinner
followed by a few drinks.

You'll go out for a few million pints, crammed in with
increasing desperation as 11pm approaches, while dinner is
represented by a bag of scampi crisps and the queasy promise of an
unspeakable kebab on the way home.

Later closing hours will blow a major hole in this militaristic
routine, and drinkers are nervous but excited.

Among the sober pillars of society, however, it's going down
like a warm Watney's in a Queensland beer garden.

A 600-strong group of circuit judges, who are regularly treated
to early-morning court appearances by British citizens whose
overindulgence of the amber fluid has led them to unwise feats of
adventurism and/or violence, tersely described the changes as
"lunacy" in a submission to the Government this week.

They called for a reversal of the scheduled changes or "a
suggestion touching in its apolitical naivete" a centrally mandated
and brutal increase to the price of alcohol.

The Association of Chief Police Officers in turn pointed out
that there was already ample field evidence of how young Britons
respond to the civilising influence of Continental trading
hours.

"We have seen the future, and it is Ibiza," is the best summary
of the current police attitude.

Pavlov's dogs salivated at the ringing of a bell; given the same
stimulus at 10 minutes before 11pm, British boozers weave to the
bar and order two more pints.

No one has yet consulted the animal behaviourists on the
intriguing question of whether this particular subset of humanity
can be retrained to gain the same fulfilment from a decently spaced
series of shandies.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are muttering darkly
about reversing the legislation when Parliament returns.

Tony Blair, fittingly, remains on holiday in an undisclosed
European location.

His own perorations on the subject of drunkenness and
hooliganism continue to be circumscribed slightly by an incident
involving his teenage son Euan, countless pints, and a section of
Leicester Square pavement, an event that occurred several years
ago, smack in the middle of an earlier "tough on teen louts"
campaign.

Perhaps, in this brief period before the war resumes, Mr Blair
will allow himself a tiny drink.